You can use the Lightspeed Retail Imports team to help you import customers and inventory via a spreadsheet that you or your former point of sale system generated.

You can't import customers' store credit, gift cards, or customers' outstanding balances (debt) to your new Lightspeed account. However, you can manually move this data into Retail POS by creating a custom Account Migration payment type.

Saving history, including sales history

Retail can only report on sales and inventory history from your first day of Retail moving forward. Your past sales history and purchase history can't be imported.

If you have extensive sales history information, you should export this information from your old POS system into a spreadsheet to keep for your records.

Adding the Account Migration payment type

You can use a custom payment type to migrate the customer's store credit, gift cards, and outstanding balances. To set up the Account Migration payment type:

1. Navigate to Settings > Payment Types.

   

2. Click +New Payment Type.

   

3. In the Payment Type Name field, enter Account Migration.

   

4. Leave the Refund As and Require Customer fields set to their default selections.
5. Click Save Changes.

Migrating store credit accounts

Many POS systems can keep track of customers' store credit accounts. You’ll want to export this information for your records. Once your customer list has been imported, you can begin entering customer deposits or leftover store credit.

1. Set up the Account Migration payment type.
2. Navigate to Sales and start a new sale.
3. Attach the customer to the sale by typing their name into the Search Customers field and clicking Search.

   

4. Click Payment.

   

5. Click Deposit.

   

6. In the Deposit amount field, enter the amount they have on their account, shown under the Open orders total heading.

   

7. Choose In-person deposit and click Next.
8. Next to the Account Migration field, click Max.

   

9. Click Finish Sale. This will put the funds on your customer’s account.

The next time you attach the customer to the sale, the transferred store credit will be available to use for payment in the Account field of the Payment screen.

Migrating gift cards

To make your existing gift cards redeemable in Lightspeed, we’ll create new gift cards with corresponding balances using the Account Migration payment type.

Gift cards in Lightspeed Retail need to be scanned with a barcode scanner or typed manually and must contain between 8 and 32 characters. If the gift cards you’re importing contain fewer than 8 characters, you'll need to enter additional letters or numbers so that they meet the minimum character requirement.

For security purposes, we recommend avoiding using sequential numbers in your gift cards. If your old gift card codes are already sequential, we recommend randomizing any prefixes used when creating the card in Lightspeed.

To migrate gift cards:

1. Set up the Account Migration payment type.
2. Navigate to Sales and start a new sale.
3. Click Gift Card.

   

   If you don't see a Gift Card button on your register, you will have to configure your gift card settings.

4. Click Custom and enter the gift card amount in the Custom amount field.

   

5. In the Gift card code field, scan your old gift card or enter the number manually.
6. Optionally, click the Electronic delivery checkbox and fill in the required fields to send the customer a digital version of their gift card.

   

7. Click Add to sale.
8. Click Payment.

   

9. Click Max next to the Account Migration payment type.

   

10. Click Finish Sale.

The gift card is now active and can be redeemed during a sale.

You can verify the card's activation by navigating to Customers > Gift Cards, and ensuring the gift card Status is listed as Active.

If you want to create all of your gift cards at once, you can repeat the above steps multiple times in a single transaction.

Migrating outstanding charges

If you set up a line of store credit for a customer and they made purchases using this credit, you will want to record their outstanding balance by adding the outstanding charges to their account. To do this:

1. Navigate to Customers > Customers.

   

2. Find your customer, using the Search tools if necessary, and click their name.

   

3. Click the Account tab.

   

4. In the Credit Limit field, type the amount you want to establish their credit limit as. They won’t be able to spend above this amount. Their limit should be more than or equal to their current Balance Owed.

   

   If they don't have an account open, click +Create Account Now to open one.

5. Click Save Changes and note down their Balance Owed.

   

6. Navigate to Sales and start a new sale.
7. Attach the customer to the sale by typing their name into the Search Customers field and clicking Search.

   

8. Click Misc.

   

9. In the note section, enter Past Charges.

   

10. In the Price field, enter their Balance Owed.
11. Uncheck the Tax box. They’ve already paid tax on their purchases, so you don’t need to tax them more.
12. Click Save.
13. Click Payment.
14. Click Max next to the Account payment type.

    

15. Click Finish Sale.

The outstanding charges will be added to their account for them to pay off later using a payment link or at the register.

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